“HTTP Cookie (hereinafter referred to as cookie information)” is a relatively small piece of text data used by a web server to identify a client when accessing the web.
When a user accesses a website on a web server, cookie information is transmitted from a web server to a web browser used by the user and is stored in a hard disk drive. If the user enters some kind of setting or input while the user browses the website, cookie information indicative of that detail is stored. This cookie information is automatically transmitted from the web browser to the web server when the user accesses the website again with the same web browser. This allows the web server to identify the client (web browser) that is accessing the web server. Accordingly, the cookie information is recently known as playing an important function for providing pleasant web access, such as providing an option of “keeping me signed in”.
Meanwhile, in a case where a plurality of users share a multi-functional peripheral that has no verification function for performing user verification at a time when using the peripheral, security risks such as leakage of personal information stored as cookie information may be assumed, which cookie information is stored by a web browser provided in the multi-functional peripheral. In this case, possible measures taken against these security risks are measures such as inactivating the cookie information.
Patent Literature 1 discloses a technique which changes a term of validity of cookie information, as a technique to inactivate cookie information.